Original bubble-pushing puzzle game!
Objective:
Cover the gray diagonal lines in each level with a small, medium, or large bubble (doesn't matter which size).
| Controls: | |
|---|---|
| Move: | Arrow keys |
| Blow a bubble: | Hold and release X key |
| Restart level: | Hold Z key |
| Pause menu: | Enter key |
If you manage to beat the game, please post a screenshot with your "TOTAL BLOWN BUBBLES" score!
Also available at: https://trevorade.itch.io/bubble-pond
UPDATES
1.1:
- Undo support with O / croak!
- Faster lots-o-little-bubble creation!
0.6 - 1.0.1:
Older versions:
I really like it! Beat all the levels and then danced to the tune. I'll try to think about some levels, I like this concept a lot.
this is great! very refreshing original weird concept for a puzzle game, and well executed
I haven't figured out level 6 yet but it's fun all the same :D
keep up the good work!
Thanks!
So my primary goal for this one was to try to avoid just creating something I've already played before.
I was slightly inspired by Fire and Ice on the NES but this is pretty drastically different from that by this point.
I'm still figuring out what types of bubble locomotion are possible to create puzzles around them :)
For anyone curious, the level complete music is based on the "Victory" theme from "Reversi" from the Intellivsion:
https://www.vgmusic.com/music/console/mattel/intellivision/
And the game music itself is the "Inventory" theme from "Dragon Slayer 4 - Drasle Family (Japan)" from the MSX:
https://www.vgmusic.com/music/computer/miscellaneous/msx/
This one was kind of surprising. It's a really cool song for being an inventory theme. Give it a listen to with http://midiplayer.ehubsoft.net/ (be sure to change the "MIDI Player Type" to "Web MIDI Player"). Anyways, I felt that it fit the tone of this game.
I converted these to .p8 files with:
https://github.com/gamax92/midi2pico
oh I noticed one input issue: when holding down the bubble button, once the bubble reaches max size, if you don't release the button quick enough, another bubble starts, which can be frustrating when there is a bubble limit. If button-release timing is not meant to be part of the challenge, then I would suggest an improvement: prevent another bubble from starting until the player releases the button and pushes it anew.
@kittenm4ster Thanks for the suggestion. I actually intentionally programmed allowing multiple bubbles to appear without letting go of X.
You're probably right that that's more harm than help. I think I wanted it when I was working on the bubble shoving logic and I was creating lots of bubbles on a blank screen :)
I'll remove it from the code next time I work on the game.
Amazing!
Very unique, fun and it's fairly polished! Good job :)
Thanks!
The only extra visual polish I can think of would be to have some leaves or something blowing around in the background so it's not just the blue background. Maybe some swampy trees in the background? They'd have to be pretty light tones to not be distracting though.
A title screen and win screen could be good too.
Nice changes! When I first played I wondered what croak was for, and I wanted a way to restart the levels with limited bubbles – two birds with one stone :) Perhaps add a "Restart level" option to the pause menu to be able to reset even quicker?
Very nice. And hard! I love it. Maybe use the new cartridge art as a start/splash screen? And remove the "reset level" option when you're not playing a level? Nitpicking. I like the palette on the new levels.
Thanks @tobiasvl!
So the cartridge art was a bit of a cop-out :) I created the picture in Photoshop using the PICO-8 palette, saved it as a PNG, imported it into PICO-8, wrote a little program which just rendered the entire sprite sheet to the screen, typed F7, saved the cart, then, finally, I copied the __label__ block from this new cart over to my BubblePond one.
I think the very last thing I'm going to do for this game is create a title screen using the space I have left. Before then I need to:
- Create the last 5 puzzles
- Reorganize all the puzzles to optimize the difficulty curve
- Implement bubble counting per level so that completing the game presents you with how many bubbles you used. You'll then be able to go back to a level and optimize your solution to get your total bubble count down
- Update the level select screen to display how many bubbles you used per level
For the title screen, I'll probably see if I can compress the large image somehow. Maybe something like this: https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=3930 It would be nice if the memory space included the Cartridge Cover as I could just read it.
As for having the reset level on the level select, I don't really care a ton :) That could be some polish I perform on the game towards the end.
@chickenxhat, thanks!
Bubbles? ✔
Pond? ✔
Frog blowing bubbles? ✔
Clouds? ✔
Grassy island? ✔
In case someone wants to stare at it in its full glory...
Updated! Now with undo support and more rapid little bubble creation!
awesome game but please add a select level menu because when writing this, I lost all my progression lol
EDIT: ok it starts at the last level, awesome
There is also a level select menu, press the pause button (enter/P).
Cool. Glad you guys enjoyed this!
I'm toying around with the idea of recreating this game using Defold and releasing it on iOS / Android.
The idea would be to add more levels (especially easier ones), more mechanics, better graphics, etc.
I'm still playing through Hollow Knight at the moment which is stealing most of my free time after the kids go to bed :)
Challenging and tricky game. Reminds me of the Super Nintendo puzzle game called, "Little Magic" where you blow bubbles and time them to explode to move a fire crystal into position.
Crazy! This is the first time I've seen that game. Gameplay looks closer to Sokoban and visually it looks like The Adventures of Lolo but it does have bubble pushing! I guess no idea is completely original.
I'll have to avoid playing this game so I don't unconsciously steal any ideas. Thanks for pointing it out though.
thanks dw817, damn they made really nice games back in the day! you think I can play that old game for free somewhere?
By the way I'm stuck at level 7, I suppose there is a method that I missed, when I move the lower level bubbles, the upper ones don't move so I don't find how to proceed
floman@ You can do it!
The trick with that level is lining up multiple large bubbles to push bubbles further to the left while still being able to push them up.
I could show you a screenshot but it's more satisfying to figure out the solution on your own :)
i really don't find how :( also it seems not very intuitive to me that moving the bottom bubles don't move the rest of the bubbles
Hi Floman. It's pretty easy to play Super Nintendo today. Just search for "SNES Emulator." Settle to download "ZSNES for Windows" from a safe site. Then search for "SNES Little Magic." Download it. It should be a .ZIP or .7Z file.
If it's ".7z" just unpack it.
Put the two together and you have the game !
damn level 12, I made all mixes possible and beat that bastard!
only one solution per level?
edit: beat lvl 13, seriously this game is incredible, even as it is right now it could be a commercial game. No need anything else
There are generally multiple solutions per level. Especially on the ones with unlimited bubbles. If you go back to play a completed level, it will tell you your lowest bubble score per level. You can then try to optimize your solution and reduce bubble waste.
Thanks for the compliments! I'm pretty happy about how this game turned out. If I were making this commercial, I would add a lot more levels (especially more easy ones). There is lots of room for additional mechanics.
yeah, and a level creator with a community website to automatically publish your levels (like pico site in fact :P)
and this could be a neat indie puzzle game
think about it
if you never do it, one day I'll be forced to copy this game and make it happen :P
I'm planning on doing it so please don't :)
Feel free to download the cart and make new levels though
wtf level 16, is there a bug to exploit to pass this level?? there are only 2 possibilities and they are both doomed to fail
No bugs to exploit. Just new mechanics to learn :)
You're still just moving around and blowing bubbles though.
Level 25 is kind of like this one but way harder :)
Since I play irregularly I had forgotten the new types of clouds and I just saw them right now in lvl 16 lol
I improved levels 7, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 22, 23, and 25.
Nice! I have to play through the game again and see what my score is. I honestly have to figure out Lvl 25 again each time I do it :)
Thanks! Whenever you play through the game again, can you let me know what your score is? :o I love trying to lower the total bubbles blown in your game! I can relate with level 25! lol
Level 3 says bubbles can be pushed to the side but I don’t understand how.
This is a really polished puzzle game! The core mechanic is just amazing. Currently, I'm stuck on level 12 (it's a hard one), but I will complete this eventually!
I finally beat the game again! So hard! These are not optimized. I was just trying to get through this again.
17 took me a while to work out something that works.
18 was a touch easier than 17 for me.
24 took me a while to work out a solution. I like this one for just how unique it is.
25 was quicker than 24 for me this time.
I really am proud of this game. It's super challenging to make fun but non-trivial puzzles. I've thought about expanding this to a Unity game but just haven't found the time.
I'd love to see people download the original cart and make their own levels! There is some custom scripting for level text and themes per level but it's mostly just the map for levels.
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